One of the big plusses of the Death Knight class is that all their skills are used often and interact together well thanks to the rune system. The downside of this however is that I have limited hotbar space, but need all the abilities readily available. One solution I have thought about is macroing together similarly used abilities, such as plague strike/icy touch, and mind freeze/strangulate. This however limits me in other ways if I only need one of the two.

Right now I am using abilities on 1-5, alt 1-5, ctrl 1-5, t, f, y, and one of my mouse buttons for death coil.

Does anyone have any good hotbar setups or creative solutions?

I bind mouse wheel and modifiers+mouse wheel, adds a decent amount of keys. I also bind r, c, v, x, the key to the left of w(not sure what it is on US keyboard), g, h, a and e, along with various modifiers+those keys. Depending on the order of importance of the skill, I'll have it with or without modifiers(with are the less important stuff, like death strike, horn of winter, blight, summon ghoul etc).

Still not my final setup though, it's something between what I used during beta, which was pretty much adding keybinds as I got new abilities, not knowing which I'd need or not, and what I'll use for raiding. Currently since I'm still leveling, it doesn't really matter, I'll think about it in details when I hit 80, but I'm probably going to redo a few of them. Spec change also forces you to change some abilities, like replacing death coil by frost strike, but keeping deathcoil somewhere accessible.

I use a scheme which allows me to position my hands as if I'm typing and gives me a large variety of easily accessible keys for abilities.

ESDF is movement.

Abilities are bound to:

12345

ZAQW

RTGB

XC

Furthermore, my ghoul commands are bound to Shift - TGBV (Attack, Stun, Huddle, and Follow me).

For abilities which are similar to another, I use Shift - Same Key. For instance, DK's have a 2 min ranged spell interrupt which is on 2. The melee instant version is shift - 2. Grasp pull target is 4 -- Command to attack (taunt) is Shift 4.

I now have a parry attack ability which I have bound to Shift - R. But I maybe try Mouse 4 or something quickly accessible.

I use the standard WASD set up from first person shooters for movement. I use a hotbar mod that allows you to set custom pages based on modifier keys, currently this is maccaroon. I then map all of my hotbars to the NUMBERPAD. Tabbing to select targets in my group or clicking them with the mouse allows me to move through multiple targets fast and gives me easy access to alt, ctr, and l. shift keys that gives me ~39 keys ( I also use the arrow keys for spell bindings). So once I am in position and ready to pull i stop using the mouse and have both hands on the keyboard. Try this and see if you like it it is good for pvp too.

I used to use a setup relying heavilly on the numpad for moves and the normal nmber keys for the rest, but this was on a normal keyboard. now I use a laptop, so the numpad was no longer an option. So I wanted a new setup that would be more comfortable.

I created this almost entirely for my DK too, but it mostly works on other classes.

WADX are my movement keys. W is forward, AD are strafe left and right, with shift making them turn, and X is backstep. Then, I use QEZC as well as SRF for my most important moves, and double that with shift which seems to work quite well. I put some CD abilities usually on 1234 and less important ones on shift 1234. This has worked incredibly for me so far. I mostly move with the mouse and AD for strafing.

I've found having a mouse with thumb buttons a real godsend. The mouse I'm currently using (Logitech MX518) has two, they're pretty handy considering that you can map all modifiers there are to them and they're very accessible. On top of that, my mouse has some redundant buttons that increase or decrease the cursor speed of which I have no use, but thankfully there are programs that let you remap those. (SetPoint for Logitech, I think.)

I've had a hard time deciding whether to use macros to map similar abilities, as some of them use runes while the similar ability doesn't. The only solution to that is to add key modifiers, but in that case it's pretty much the same to just add two more separate buttons with different keybinds.

It's interesting that not many people mention that they use shift keys as I find them very accessible in conjunction with 1 - 6

WASD - Movement

Abilities
123456
Shift+123456

Large Timed Cooldowns
F1 - Fx

Quick response keys - interrupts, silences etc
QERFTG / Shift + Aforementioned keys

Ghoul
CTRL + 1234 (Though i usually just leave him in def stance and he does his own job :-) )

I find that i barely use the pet stuff. So I don't have those custom bind. Default I think its Ctrl+12345.... I use

Movement: ESDF
123456
F1-3
QWRYAGZXCVBN

I use a 2-Thumb button mouse, but I use 1 of them for Ventrillo and the other one just sits there.... (I should probably do something with that). I think macro-ing the Plague Strike/Ice Touch doesn't give me enough information. Just a little question: Should I be looking at the runes rather than the skills? What do you look at?

I have my action bar bound to `12345rtfgcv and the bottom left and bottom right action bars are bound to the same keys with a shift and a ctrl modifier, respectively. Some combinations are difficult to hit while moving, so pick which spells go where accordingly.

I find myself being in a more rogue-like mentality when it comes to my DK - especially in a big battle where I really have to make sure i'm concentrating on my reactions. I have a set rotation (combo) i'll open with depending what role i'm playing or aoe'ing. I often find myself just bouncing between cooldowns in terms of my mentality.

I use runewatch mainly to check if I have a death rune up and where as well as my runic power, not so much for focusing on what runes are up as such.

using a g15 keyboard is nice too. for my DK i use the 18 macro keys almost exclusively. I've got all the ingame binds done to 1-0, then alt + 1-0.
for those who HAVE the g15, or a similar keyboard, I'd suggest a similar configuration.

g1-g6 are all "as needed" skills, on my DK they're things like IBF, blood tap, as well as attacks that i use less often such as and anything that i need at my fingertips but not something i do often enough.

g7 and g9 are the skills i spam a lot, 1 is my diseases upkeep macro (/castsequence plaguestrike, icy touch) the other is a macro that does obliterate or modified by my mouse button it'll do runestrike
g6 and g10-g12 are my movement keys, bound to the typical wasd.

g13-g18 are most of my out of combat type skills, as my hand is usually hovering over them. a few things would be path of frost, horn of winter, death pack, and my presence keys.

any suggestions would be nice too, I'm always looking for a better way to combine all my keys into a nice neat area :-D still not 80 yet, so don't know what other skills and combinations will be useful, but just from doing 5 man's, seems pretty nice. the perks of using the g-keys for it is for other things, you can still use the wasd configuration, swap to bar 2, and you're set for pvp or whatever you need.

I really believe that what will separate the good DKs from the bad ones is what they are paying attention to. The bad ones will be watching their action bar waiting for Scourge Strike to light up. The good ones will be watching their runes and when they see 1F1U light up they will know they can Scourge Strike, IT/PS, Bone Shield/Chains of Ice, etc.. Do yourself a favor and take your strikes and diseases off your hotbars so you stop looking at them and start paying more attention to your rune cooldowns.

Like many players, I don't keep my action bars visible; instead, I look at my runes and have my most important cooldowns displayed on a separate area of the screen. However, I have run into a problem; when I turn into a ghoul due to Shadow of Death, the ghoul's abilities replace bar #1, but since I don't have bar 1 visible, I can't see these abilities or their cooldowns.

I would like to add a condition to Bartender4 so that it shows bar #1 only when I am a ghoul. Bartender supports the standard WoW macro conditions, but I have been unable to find out what (if it even exists) the macro-testable condition is for a death knight currently being under "Shadow of death".

Having been a shadow priest in a former life, I am finding that a mixture of a decent DoT timer (or using Quartz debuffs) to track diseases, and a cooldown display mod like Cooldown count is showing me my cooldowns just fine. It fails to deal with death runes however, I will be downloading a rune addon for my own sanity.

Keeping track of multiple DoTs and cooldowns is second nature to me now, but I can see how managing it fresh from other classes might be difficult.

To throw my hat into the pot I use:

WASD (change A and D to strafe left and right respectively).

This frees up Q and E

From there I use:

`123456
tab,q,e,r,t,y
capslock, f,g,h,j
z (my vent push to talk),x,c,v

I use shift + CTRL modifiers, and I also use F1-F5, along with various other keybinds for other lesser used skills.

Obviously, the higher usage skills go in 1-2-3-4-q-e-r-t-f-g-c-v since they're the most accessible.

I use a creative fatality keyboard, which while being the biggest piece of garbage (I go through a lot of them - and sometimes you have to fix the keys) has an amazing keyboard outlay. This is really important for those of us with small hands seeking to hit many buttons.

As an aside, it might be nice for this thread not to descend into, yet another, list of keybinds that people use. Take it for granted that there your WASD setup or your EASD setup is used by a lot of people. If you have something *creative* feel free to post it, but seriously, chaps, nothing makes me care less about a post than a string of characters with nothing different to it than the 10 posts previously.

I employ the same methodology when binding keys.

Secondary Attacks = 1
Spammable Attacks = 2
Slows = Alt - 2
Main Attack = 3
Death Strike/Spellsteal = Alt-3
Instant attacks = 4 (Frost Strike/DC/ Fireblast)
AoE = 6 or 8


Really, you bind however you want as long as you know where things are, and they are easily accessible. The whole purpose of keybinding is so that you have fast reaction timing and you can do other things with your mouse. If you have to constantly stare at your bars, you are doing it wrong.

Based on my experiences so far, I'd have to agree wholeheartedly; my N52 has been invaluable in setting up a solid keybind arrangement simply because I have access to three to four times the keys in an esdf setup via the pad's four modes. With that said, I did have it die out for an instance run and found that you can still be 95%+ capable as a DPS with a normal esdf setup on a keyboard but I digress.

I'm using the following as my setup:

Esdf - move
Q - attack on/off
W - plague strike
A - death grip
Z - icy touch
X - howling blast
C - death strike
V - frost strike
G - obliterate
T - pestilence
R - blood strike

I have a number of other abilities bound to two other modes on the n52 but I haven't gotten used to them yet as I'm still transitioning from limited/no short term self buffs (Druid) to having multiple buttons for dps/threat and survivability.

So any thoughts on doubling up abilities to one key with an alt press?

Pestilence/Blood Boil: I'm pretty unlikely to use blood boil without having already used pestilence
Scourge Strike/Death Strike
Blood Strike/Rune Strike: I figure that blood strike is a low priority but a commonly pressed ability, and rune strike is a high priority that could replace it.

Additionally, any ideas on actually macroing in abilities? Is there any ability that can always be trumped by another, like rune strike? Or is there an ability that would always be lower priority than refreshing bone shield?

It won't even replace it actually, one button press on such a macro will both queue up Rune Strike and perform Blood Strike. In the old threads people often recommended macroing Rune Strike into every attack and this was great advice. I have done exactly that and it's ridiculously effective, mostly because RS is so OP. Often I'll be fighting something and then it just suddenly dies with a 3.6k RS crit popping up on my SCT.

You can choose whatever bar you want to be the "possess bar". This applies to ghouls, mind control quests, and vehicles.

Does Rune Strike work if you macro it? I admit I haven't really looked at my combat log to check.

Maybe it's just me, but it looks like every time I queue it up, then use a strike attack (heart strike, seath strike, obliterate, etc), it unqueues and won't go off.

I've resorted to queuing it up and then using a spell to ensure it goes off.



For my layout, I use 1-5, alt+1-5, then shift+alt+1 - 5, as well as ~ and my thumb buttons on my mouse. I'm thinking about making a macro for my diseases though, but I use Icy Touch a lot when I solo and mobs run or I need to pull and DC is down.